Transition to the Roman Empire
The '''Transition to the Roman Empire' lasted from about 134 BC until 30 BC. It began with the first plunge of the Republic into confusion by the election of reforming tribune Tiberius Gracchus. It then ended with the victory of Augustus at Actium, which marked the demise of the Roman Republic and the advent of the Roman Empire. For 350 years, the Roman Republic had struggled, grown, survived, and thrived. Through it all, the Romans had never turned away from their most basic founding principle; that no king shall reign in Rome. Every year men stood for election, every year free ballots were cast by free citizens, and every year power was transferred peacefully in the Senate. Nevertheless, Roman success would prove to be the undoing of the Roman Republic. With no other great powers left to challenge their dominance of the Mediterranean, the Romans lost their most critical unifying force; a worthy opponent. Rome faced a treacherous new political environment where economic inequality disrupted the traditional way of life, and political polarisation and rampant corruption sparked violent clashes. In the years after 134 BC, the republican system could not stem the tide of greed and ambition that lurks always in the hearts of men. Men like the Gracchi Brothers, Marius and Sulla, and Pompey and Crassus set dangerous new precedents, that Julius Caesar simply took to their logical conclusion. In defiance of what had once been held good and true by the Romans, a century of civil war and violent class conflict, would eventually lead the people into the safe and comforting arms of one man; Octavian Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. The Gracchi had struck the first blow when they introduced violence into the political arena. Marius had hammered the point home when he brazenly stood for Consulship after Consulship. While Sulla himself struck the killing stroke when he had himself appointed Dictator for life. The era of noble adherence to Republican tradition and the rule of law was dead, and the era of the naked power-grab was at hand. History Late Republic The counterpoint to Rome's continuing and apparently irresistible success abroad, against Carthage and in Greece, was growing strife at home. With no other great powers left to challenge their dominance of the Mediterranean, the Romans lost their most critical unifying force; a worthy opponent. For 350 years, the Roman Republic had survived for two overarching reasons: the lower classes were not so impoverished that they had been driven to violent revolution to improve their lot in life; and the upper class families recognised that solidarity kept them firmly in charge and didn't allow their rivalries to spill-out into the public sphere. Both these critical linchpins were critically altered by the expanding empire, leading to a range of political and social ills that would eventually prove to be the undoing of the Republic. In the first place it made it even more difficult to ensure popular participation in government. Prolonged warfare had reinforced the authority of the Senate, which grew to far exceed in power the people's assemblies. It must be said that its record was a remarkable one, but what little democracy had existed in Rome was a thing of the past. The Republic was now a true oligarchy, designed for the foremost families to hold onto power. Another weakness arose paradoxically because all its subject lands provided the Romans with wealth never before imagined. The problem was that all the new wealth was ending up in the hands of the already wealthy upper classes, with endless opportunities for personal enrichment in the provinces; much of this was legal, some was simply looting and theft. The fortunes to be made, and made quickly, were immense, but access to this wealth could only be obtained through participation in politics, for it was from the Senate that provincial governors were chosen. This period exhibited the escalation in competitiveness among the ruling class that was later fatal; immediate personal ambition and cutthroat rivalry took the place of long-term political stability. Meanwhile, direct exposure to the Hellenic east brought a change in Roman attitudes, as the stoic foundations of Rome were replaced by lavish homes and ostentatious displays of wealth. In a way this can all be traced back to Scipio Africanus, who had inadvertently introduced the cult of personality into Roman politics. In his later years, he was tried for profiteering from the war in Greece; though he was never convicted of anything, neither did he deny the charges. The hero of the Second Punic War set an example for powerful men to follow (Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar), who would not have to deal with the humility of facing an external threat to check their boundless egos. On the other hand, Rome's emergence as the dominant political force in the Mediterranean would also have disastrous consequences for common Romans. The backbone of the Republic had always been the citizen farmer soldier, who met the property requirement for service in the legions. But now many formerly upstanding citizens found themselves gradually sinking into poverty. The root cause was terrible cost of the second Punic War. Not only had conscripted soldiers been absent for long years of almost continuous campaigns, but the physical damage to southern Italy was enormous. Meanwhile, the upper classes who were lucky enough to amass wealth in imperial enterprise laid it out in the only good investment available, land. The effect in the long run was to concentrate property in large estates usually worked by slaves made cheaper by the wars. Rome had always had slaves, but it was now a full-blown slave economy with slave arriving in Italy in the hundreds of thousands. There was no longer an assured place for the small landholder, who now had to make his way to the city and fend for himself as best he could. Yet as a citizen he still had a vote. To those with wealth and political ambition he became someone to buy, since the road to lucrative office lay through popular elections. Once votes had a price, the citizen of Rome was unlikely to welcome their continual devaluation by extending civic rights to the rest of Italy. Perhaps the most important consequence for the Republic was that the property qualification for service in the legion were fast becoming unattainable. Property qualification were lowered, lowered again, and then abolished completely by Marius. But the Marian Reforms had unforeseen consequences that gradually turned the army into a new kind of political force. The properties that had bound the Roman Republic were coming undone. The people were fast becoming desperate enough to use any means necessary to get a piece of pie. Most in the Senate were deaf to the ill-winds that were blowing, consumed by their personal rivalries, but some championed the cause of the broader population whose grievances seemed to go unheeded. This became the dominant factional split in Rome, between the conservatives and reforming popularists. Looking for good guys and bad guys in this division is futile. For all the conservative platitudes of defending Republican virtue, most were interested merely in protecting their privileged position. While many of the popularists were men who simple realised that all they had to do was stoke the resentment of the masses in order to get their piece of the pie. Defenders of freedom and liberty were everywhere in word, and nowhere in deed during the final century of the Republic. Gracchi Brothers In this context, Tiberius Gracchus (d. 133 BC) was elected one of the ten Tribute of the Plebs in 133 BC. This was the year that many later Romans themselves pointed to as the turning point in the Roman Republic, when as one ancient writer put it, "daggers first entered the forum". Tiberius was from an influential family of the ruling elite; his mother was a daughter of Scipio Africanus. Yet his own political career in the Senate was cut-short, when he was unjustly rebuked from his actions while campaigning in Spain. Instead he began to look to the people for political support. Tiberius was elected tribune on the wildly popular call for aggressive agrarian reform. His idea was to redress the grievances of displaced smallholders by redistributing government owned farmland to settle landless citizens; to enforce a widely ignored law that limited the ownership of more than 125 hectares of land. This bill would obviously impact almost every wealthy Senator, who stood to lose an enormous amount of money. The Senate not only hated the bill, but the man who proposed it, seeing Tiberius as a traitor to his class. But he sidestepped this problem, and further enraged the Senate by bypassing it, taking the bill directly to the assembly of people, which, while legal, was against longstanding custom. Unfortunately for Gracchus, the Senate persuaded one of his Tribune colleagues to veto the motion. Tiberius improvised a way out of the impasse that only escalated the crisis; he had his supporters manhandled the other Tribute out of the assembly and had him impeach, a clear violation of a basic tenet of the office. He then brought Roman politics to a standstill by vetoing any other legislation until the law was enacted; it is estimated that roughly 75,000 new farmer were created in that year. But the final straw for the Senate was Tiberius' attempt to run for a second term as Tribute, in strict violation of term limits. The enmity between the Senate and Tiberius was deeply personal by this stage. A small cabal of conservative Senators and their armed retainers descended on a public rally for Tiberius, and in the ensuing riot, he was targeted and clubbed to death. Tiberius' tenure as Tribune would have been the most controversial in Roman history, had it not been for his younger brother's even more ambitious and controversial tenure a decade later. Driven by personal revenge for his martyred brother, Gaius Gracchus (d. 121 BC) was elected Tribune in 123 BC. Like his brother before him, he legislated for agrarian reform, but added a whole slate of far-reaching policies that touched on almost every aspect of Roman society: he rebooted his brother's land commission to identify illegally held land for redistribution; relieved some of the population pressure in Italy by establishing colonies overseas; capped the prices of grain for the residents of Rome, a step towards the state-sponsored free grain dole introduced by the First Triumvirate; outlawed the special judicial commission, a device used by the Senate to eliminate political rivals (it had been used against many of Tiberius' associates); introduced the free issue of clothes and equipment to soldiers; and created a new law court to investigate charges of bribery and corruption, a rampant problem that had been ignored for years. Gaius also tried to tackle one of the thorniest issues of its day, the extension of Roman citizenship throughout the Italian peninsula; an issue that would be revisited in the Social War (91–88 BC). This last proposal was not popular with the Plebeians, and he lost much of his support. Where Tiberius failed to win his second illegal term as Tribune, Gaius succeeded through a neat trick and met his own downfall seeking a third term. He lost the election, and now a free citizen his Senatorial enemies brought trumped up charges against him. Gaius was forced to flee Rome with his enemies in pursuit, and committed suicide before he could be caught. The Gracchi Brothers had gotten the late Republic off with a bang. They reenergised class struggles that had been dormant for centuries. Their deaths marked the raising of the stakes in politics; in the last century of the Republic, factional bitterness reached its peak because politicians knew their lives might be forfeit. The conservatives in the Senate failed to see that they fronted a reform movement that had more than its fair share of legitimate grievances, and harden themselves against any of the desperately needed reforms; in their stubborn refusal to let go the old order, they virtually guaranteed it would be smashed apart. The populists in the Senate meanwhile would look to the practical example of the Gracchi, that long-standing laws and customs could be broken with impunity, if supported by a loud enough mob. The streets of Rome would soon run red with the blood of mobs and counter-mobs, egged on by leaders who craved power at any cost. Marius and Sulla The final plunge of the Republic into confusion was precipitated in 112 BC by a new war in North Africa. When a succession crisis in the Roman allied state of Numidia (modern day northern Algeria) descended into a full-fledged civil-war, and a number of Roman businessmen were killed, Rome decided to intervene; the Jugurthine War (112–106 BC). Military commanders at this time, no longer fighting for survival, were clearly now in it for the money, dragging out campaigns to win more plunder, and accepting bribes from their adversary. In 107 BC, the public, weary of corrupt officials prolonging the war in Numidia, swept to power as Consul a general from a virtually unknown provincial Latin family, Gaius Marius '(d. 86 BC); destined to go down in history as the great re-maker of the Roman legions. Marius was an example of the kind of "''new man" who had been able to rise through the ranks on merit during the long struggle with Carthage; by new man, the Roman's meant none of his ancestors had ever been Consul. The son of a farmer, he volunteered for service in the legions at a early age, where he began his agonisingly slow climb up the military and political ladder, resisted at every rung by the old guard. He was elected Military Tribune in 134 BC, Tribune of the Plebs in 120 BC, and Praetor (one rung below Consul) in 116 BC. During the Jugurthine War, the first Roman commander was eventually put on trial for corruption which caused a scandal in Rome, and Marius was second-in-command to his replacement, Quintus Metellus. Metellus waged the war in Africa with obvious competence but was overly cautious, thus gave Marius his chance to ride the indignation in Rome to the Consul on a platform against political and military corruption. Once elected, however, he found that bottling up the rebellious Numidian prince was not as easy as he had claimed. While his military brilliance failed on this occasion, Marius still found a way, convincing a local chieftain to betray the princeling and turn him over in chains; the lieutenant tasked with these delicate and dangerous negotiations was Lucius Cornelius Sulla (d. 78 BC). Marius received all the credit for winning the war in Africa including a Triumph in Rome, but failed to even mention Sulla's actions. The incident to mark the beginning of a rift between Marius and Sulla, a rift that would eventually open into a chasm with the two men standing on opposite sides of a bitter civil war. No sooner had the unpopular war in Africa been brought to a quick end, than a new threat to the north of Italy became a crisis; a long dormant menace was back with vengeance, the dreaded Gauls. The innumerable tribes of the Celtic Gauls to the northwest, and ethnically and linguistically distinction Germans to the northeast were forever on the move. Two particular tribes, the Cimbri and Teutones, began to grow in strength and push south, encroaching on Roman interest to the north of the Alps and in southern France. Legions were sent north to put down the impertinent barbarians but instead suffered successive defeats in 109 BC and 105 BC. The apparent incompetence of the Senate had been put on full display, and the call was made for Gaius Marius. His election to a second term as Consul was illegal, but the rule of law gave way to popular sentiment; he would hold the office for an unprecedented seven time during his career. In order to fight this new enemy, Marius insisted on reorganising the basic structure of the army; the '''Marian Reforms. First, he eliminated the property requirement for recruitment to the legions, allowing the unemployed Roman masses to enlist in military service. Second, he abandoned the traditional three-line Manipular formation as the basic tactical unit, in favour of the Cohort, rapidly cycling ranks so that fresh troops were always at the front. Thirdly, he got rid of the unwieldy baggage trains, and ordered the troops themselves to carry their own regulated equipment; the nobility derisively referred to the soldiers as "Marius’ Mules", but it made the legions immeasurably more mobile. And finally, he rebranded the army as a career choice rather than a temporary obligation, and promoted strictly on merit, rather than young nobles simply stepping into positions of leadership. Having built an army capable of defeating the Gauls, Marius promptly did just that, virtually annihilating both tribes in turn at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BC) and Battle of Vercellae (101 BC). The Marian Reforms had resulted in a much more effective armies, but the changing nature of the army also had unforeseen consequences that would be all too evident in Marius' lifetime. From here on out, poor citizens became career soldiers, promised a salary while they served and a plot of land when they retired. But the Senate was notoriously slow with pay cheques and often reneged of land grants. Soon enough the loyalty of the legions subtly shifted from the interests of the state, and to generals who led them and could deliver plunder and land. After five consecutive terms as Consul, Marius retired from politics, and it appeared the great general had left the public stage for good. Meanwhile by the 1st-century BC, the Italian peninsula had stood firmly together for hundreds of year, even against the might of Hannibal Barca. Yet even now, full Roman citizenship barely extend much beyond the hinterland of the city of Rome itself. Instead a complex collection of alliances between Rome and the cities and communities of Italy still endured, that dated back to the Samnite Wars and before. In the past this arrangement had served everyone well, with the Romans sharing generously in the spoils of war, in return for the Italian troop levies. But in recent decades, they found themselves increasingly sharing the risk of Rome's military campaigns, but not its rewards. Since the Gracchi Brothers, the conservatives in the Senate had hardened themselves against even obviously just reforms. It would take two bloody years of the Social War (91–88 BC) for the Italians to finally be granted their simple request for citizenship. The second class status afforded the Italian allies finally became intolerable, when a Tribune called Drusus took up the thorny issue in 91 BC; first the Senate tried to kill his legislation and when that didn't work, they simply killed Drusus. In the aftermath, town after town across Italy openly declared that they no longer bore any allegiance to Rome. The first year of the war was dangerous, with the tribes of central and southern Italy traditionally among the best soldiers in Rome. It was quick and decisive political action that turned the war; the Senate understanding now that citizenship was inevitable, offered it to any Italian in revolt who would lay down his arms. Most jumped at the chance, and the revolt quickly fizzled out. The man who emerged as the hero of the Social War was the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla '(d. 78 BC). This did not sit particularly well with Marius, who had been brought out of retirement as an advisor, but refused the command by the Senate, afraid of the ''new man returning to the political arena. Sulla in contrast was born into a Patrician family of ancient pedigree though of little wealth or politically influential. Early in his military career, he had actually been Marius' protege, but a rift had since developed between the pair because Marius invariably drew the limelight to himself. After the Social War, Roman politics were dominated by Anatolia (modern day Turkey), where King Mithridates of Pontus (d. 63 BC) had taken advantage of Rome’s troubles to threaten the newly incorporated province of Pergamon; a former staunch ally bequeathed to Rome in 133 BC by its last king. By 88 BC the east demanded urgent action, and Sulla was the natural choice to lead a Roman campaign. But the aging Marius had his mind set on one last fling with glory, and through the use of mob violence in the streets of Rome, intimidated the Senate into transferring the command to him. The use of undemocratic thuggery in Roman politics was starting to become less the exception and more and more the rule, but Sulla's response was totally unprecedented. He made for the legionary camp preparing for service in the east, and marched instead on Rome itself. Sulla forced Marius to flee the city for Africa, put the Senate firmly back in control, and then departed east to deal with Mithridates. But his illegal actions caused a split in the city into two staunchly opposing factions, pro-Sulla and pro-Marius, representing respectively the conservatives and popularists. The pro-Sulla faction seem initially to prevail, until Marius raised an army in Africa and followed the precedence Sulla had just set. The old general and his army occupied Rome, where he initiated a gruesome purge of his political opponents. That Marius and his protégé Lucius Cornelius Cinna (d. 85 BC) were elected in the aftermath as Consuls came as no surprise to anyone; everyone who opposed them was either dead or fled. This unprecedented seventh term as Consul was the culmination Marius' life, dying of natural causes after just thirteen days in office. Meanwhile in the east, Sulla easily dealt with the First Mithridatic War (88–84 BC). Athens had allied with Mithridates in the hope of driving the Romans from Greece, but the city was besieged into submission. The Romans then won two resounding victories at the battles of Chaeronea and of Orchomenus (86 BC). Nevertheless, having heard the news from Rome that Marius' faction had returned to power and declared him an "enemy of the state", Sulla agreed a hasty peace that left Mithridates in power to plague Rome again some 20 years later. Sulla's return from the east in 83 BC, backed by an army of 40,000 men and much treasure, led to a brief but full-scale civil-war. Armies were sent against him, but none could even give the wildly popular and charismatic Sulla a serious fight. When the first army deserted en-masse, Cinna decided to lead the second himself, but his soldiers mutinied and stoned him to death. The path to Rome now lay open. Inside the city, news of Sulla's imminent return was met with panic. The civil war culminated in the Battle of the Colline Gate (November 82 BC), a huge and desperate struggle just outside the city-walls, with both sides believing their own victory would save the Roman Republic. In the end, the Marian forces broke and Sulla stood alone as the master of Rome. This time the butchery surpassed all previous excesses. Sulla offered a reward for the killing or capturing of supporters of Marius and his colleagues. To guide would-be assassins, a "proscription" list was published of 1,500 suitable names, among whom were 40 Senators. The reign of terror that followed ultimately engulfed some 9,000 men, women and children. The Senate was now in a mood to agree with anything that Sulla might suggest, and he was appointed Dictator, reviving the role for the first time since the Second Punic War over a century before. In an unprecedented development this dictatorship was not for a maximum of six months, but dictator for life. Marius, the greatest of the new men, ''had been idolised by the masses, and Sulla used his powers to put through a comprehensive program of reform, aimed at putting the Senate firmly back on control of state affairs. To silence the popularist demagogues, the Tribunes were stripped not only of much of their powers, but also of prestige; ex-tribunes were prohibited from ever holding any other office, so ambitious men would no longer seek election. The Senate was then doubled in size, packed with staunch conservatives, and its powers strengthened over the courts and the provinces. And finally the steps to becoming Consul were definitively codified as the ''Cursus Honorum, and made stricter to ensure that the future leaders of Rome could handle the responsibilities; an individual must reach a certain age and level of experience before running for any particular office. He hoped that these reforms had made his own career an institutional impossibility. In 80 BC, after two years as Dictator, Sulla announced that he was stepping down from office and, after a year in legitimate office as Consul, retired from public life; peacefully stepping away from near-absolute power as Cincinnatus had done. He died two years later, and his gravestone was marked by an epitaph that he wrote himself, summing up his life as well as anything anyone else might say; "no greater friend, no worse enemy". Sulla honestly believed that he had put the Roman Republic back on the track of stable government. But the ambitious men who followed him focused on the facts of Sulla's life and career; the power he had gained by any means necessary. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Rome's greatest orator in the dying years of the Republic, would often quote Pompey as saying, "If Sulla could, why can't I?" Pompey and Crassus Whatever great works Sulla accomplished in his life, saving the Roman Republic was certainly not among them. Indeed the ringleaders of its demise were some of Sulla's leading supporters. In the generation afterward, political life in Rome was increasingly dominated by two of those supporter; '''Marcus Licinius Crassus (d. 53 BC) and Gnaeus Pompey Magnus (d. 48 BC). Both men were from uninfluential families of the ruling elite, and had supported Sulla in his civil-war against the Marian faction. In his victory, Crassus had played by far the more important role, commanding the right side on the line at the crucial Battle of the Colline Gate. But in the first chapter of what turned out to be the defining stories of his life, Crassus was overshadowed by the younger and more charismatic Pompey. Pompey had married Sulla's stepdaughter, and managed to wheedle a Triumph out of his father-in-law for a campaign against Marian rebels in Sicily and Hispania; it was Sulla himself who bestowed his suffix Pompey Magnus or Pompey the Great, originally as a sarcastic dig at his arrogant demand. Both men were outstanding examples of a relatively new trend in Roman history; men who pursued their careers with unflinching single-mindedness. Pompey was the son of a renowned general, and an outstanding general himself. His career seems to have been driven entirely by two things; desire for military glory and disregard for traditional political constraints. Crassus on the other hand bought and sold his way to the top of Rome's financial food-chain during chaotic economic mess of the Sullan reign-of-terror, buying up whatever the proscribed left behind. In this pursuit he showed both shrewd financial acumen as well as a penchant for ruthless profiteering; he ran Rome's fire service, offering to put a fire out if the distraught owner agreed to sell the property at a ridiculously low price. Yet in Roman culture wealth may have been looked upon with envy, but true admiration were reserved for military heroes. So while Pompey lived a charmed life idolised by the masses, Crassus had to be content as the respected richest man and largest landowner. Prior to the famous slave revolt led by Spartacus, Pompey was just another ambitious general, and Crassus just another fat-cat on the make. But afterwards both would turn their well-deserved and not-so well-deserved acclaim into a high flying political career. For the most part, slaves were treated oppressively during the period of the Roman Republic, kept in place by fear of retribution; they could be arbitrarily abused or flogged or even killed without legal consequence. It was only when the empire began to stop expanding, and the supply-line of human trafficking dried-up, that slaves were granted any kind of rights. Spartacus' slave revolt is called the Third Servile War (73–71 BC), the first two being relatively local affairs in Sicily in 135 BC and 104 BC. In 73 BC, some seventy gladiators and slaves fought their way out of a gladiator school in Capua. Soon Spartacus and Crixus emerged as the leaders of the band of escapees, and they spent the summer raiding the rich country estates of the region, gaining plunder and freeing more slaves. Now numbering in their thousands, they took refuge on the densely forested slopes of Mount Vesuvius to winter and train. It was here that a local Roman militia of 3,000 men caught up with them, and blocked their only escape. But displaying the kind of ingenuity that would make them such a formidable force, Spartacus had his men make ladders, rappel down the cliffs, and annihilate the surprised militia. Still not taking the slave revolt too seriously, a second militia was sent after them but met with a similar result, adding more weapons and armour to their growing stockpile. With each successes, more and more slaves flocked to Spartacus’ cause, swelling their ranks eventually to some 120,000. By 72 BC, the alarmed Senate dispatched two Consular armies to decisively put an end to the slave revolt. At this point, the slaves split, with Crixus peeling off some 30,000 men and heading south to continue plundering, while Spartacus and the main group headed north out of Italy. But the disciplined Roman legions were no militia, and Crixus’ force was quickly defeated and killed, while Spartacus became trapped in the Alps between the two Consular armies. However, Spartacus acted decisively, defeating the ill-prepared army to the north, before wheeling around and routing the second army. At this point, Crassus, famed as a harsh disciplinarian, was given the command and he brought the Third Servile War to its brutal conclusion. For unclear reasons, Spartacus had spurned the opportunity to escape Italy, and instead moved south, making for the toe of Italy with the intention of crossing to Sicily. When he was betrayed by the pirates bribed to ferry them across to the island, Crassus had them trapped. In desperation, Spartacus’ army tried to break through the Roman blockade. Although some 5,000 succeeded, the rest were massacred or captured; Spartacus himself is assumed to have died in the battle. It was at this point that Pompey returned to Italy after putting down rebellions in Spain, just in time to defeated this last 5,000 exhausted and fleeing slaves. Pompey, the master of self-promotion, sent a message to the Senate announcing that he had officially brought the Third Servile War to an end. And it was a grisly end too; crosses were erected along the Appian Way, the main road south from Rome, and 6000 slaves were crucified as a stark reminder to slaves everywhere of what happens if they forget their place in the world. When the honours were being handed-out after the legions returned to Rome, Crassus had to stand side-by-side with the undeserving Pompey, and share the credit for the victory. But Crassus, always the businessman, agreed to join forces with Pompey to achieve the co-Consulship in 70 BC. Pompey was ineligible because of his youth and inexperience, but both men refused to stand-down their armies, until the Senate agreed and made sure the election produced the result that was in everyone's best interest. Neither Pompey nor Crassus was an insider in the ruling elite, and they dismantled much of the solid bases of law and Senatorial power that Sulla had tried to establish; Tribunes’ powers for instance were fully restored. The situation that Sulla had tried to remedy was thus restored, intensified by his intervention. Meanwhile, a campaign that offered glory and riches in abundance was already underway in the east. Bithynia was a small but strategically important independent kingdom in Anatolia on the Hellespont, the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It was desired by both Rome and Mithridates of Pontus, who had been stalled but not defeated by Sulla years earlier. Upon his death, the last king willed Bithynia to Rome, but Mithridates aware of Rome's troubles in Spain, decided to challenge Rome again, sparking the Third Mithridatic War (73-63 BC). The Senate responded by sending Lucius Licinius Lucullus (d. 56 BC), another close ally of Sulla, to deal with Mithridates. By all accounts Lucullus waged the war in the east with competence, winning victories at the Battles of Tigranocerta (69 BC) and Artaxata (68 BC). Nevertheless, Pompey coveted the eastern command, and by chance or design happened to be in the region. After his term as Consul, Pompey refused an ordinary province, and instead, despite vehement opposition by conservative Senators, secured an extraordinary command; a special naval force with unprecedented power over the entire Mediterranean in order to deal with the pirates that had been plaguing it for decades. It took him just three months to clear the sea of pirate menace; in truth the threat had been grossly exaggerated, but it was still a brilliantly planned operation. The campaign left Pompey in Cilicia in southern Anatolia, and his allies initiated a ruthless campaign to undermine Lucullus’ leadership both among in his own legions and in Rome, which soon succeeded in having the eastern command transferred. It was in these campaigns that Pompey truly earned his honorific Magnus. Pompey dealt swiftly with Mithridates, first peeling off his ally Armenia, and then decisively defeating his army at the Battle of the Lycus (66 BC). Once considered Rome's most implacable foe, Mithridates fled but such was Pompey's reputation that he could find no refuge, and eventually committed suicide. Pompey then went further, eager to emulate Alexander the Great who he so admired. The entire eastern Mediterranean, from Anatolia through Syria to Palestine, was in a state of turmoil. Anatolia was subdued, Syria was annexed in 64 BC as a Roman province, and Palestine soon followed too with Jerusalem finally falling to him after a three-month siege. Throughout the region Pompey established an administrative systems of provinces and client-states that would preserve peace in the coming years. They would also bring in vast new quantities of tax, literally double the annual tax coming into the Roman treasury. Pompey's third triumph in 61 BC trumpeted the grandeur of his achievement, but the Senate now feared him as a potential tyrant. For two years political obstruction prevented Pompey from fulfilling his obligations to his veteran legions of plots of land on the Italian peninsula. The situation brought him into a natural alliance with two other powerful but frustrated men; his long-time rival Crassus and an up-and-coming young popularist politician called Julius Caesar. Catilinarian Conspiracy While the Catiline Conspiracy (63 BC) was a minor affair in the broad sweep of Roman history, it well-illustrates the sickness that had taken hold at the very heart of the Roman Republic. The only rule was power by any means necessary, because once in power the rules could be changed and those who disagreed eliminated. That a scheming bungler like Lucius Sergius Catilina (62 BC) could dream big egotistical dreams of ruling Rome was a sign of the times. Catilina was a ambitious minor Patrician noble with a scandal filled past, that he had successfully dodged through bribery; an accusation of adultery with a vestal virgin, and corruption as governor in Africa. In 63 BC, he stood for election as Consul. With Catilina running on a platform of debt cancellation, the nobility had no choice but to throw their support behind the provincial "new man", Marcus Tullius Cicero '''(d. 43 BC). Cicero was born into a relatively wealthy Plebeian family from Arpinum about 100 miles from Rome, and had battled his way up the Roman political ladder through his own drive. Fortunately he was one of the most gifted men of his generation, garnering a reputation as the greatest orator of his day. Although he made his name successfully prosecuting the governor of Sicily, whose corruption far exceeded even the low standards of the day, Cicero firmly believed in the continued dominance of the Senate. In the Consul election of 63 BC, Cicero won, and an embittered Catilina subsequently conspired to overthrow the government. Until now, the quasi-religious sovereignty of elections had never been question, but even that was breaking-down. Catilina gathered around him a collection of corrupt ex-Senators, embittered veterans, and indebted commoners, with the planned coup to be kicked-off by assassinating Cicero himself. However, Cicero was tipped-off and the plot foiled, forcing Catilina to flee the city to an army gathering near Etruria. The next part of the coup was in turn thwarted, when the conspirators tried to entice some Gauls to join their cause, who promptly betrayed them to earn the good will of the Senate. Five conspirators in Rome were arrested and executed at once; an act that would haunt Cicero’s career, and led to him being briefly exiled by his political enemies some years later. Yet their deaths did cause the conspiracy to promptly imploded. Plagued by desertions, the army in Etruria was easily routed, with Catilina himself killed in the fighting. Caesar’s Early Career Not many men build a career so effectively that their name means "emperor" two-thousand years later. Yet such is the case of Guais '''Julius Caesar (d. 44 BC), the origin of both the German Kaiser and Russian Tsar. Julius Caesar was born into a Patrician family of ancient pedigree but little wealth or politically influential. Caesar's background, of a noble family fallen on hard times, seems to have spurred in him a bitter hatred of the privileges of the old order. In his youth, his marriage to Cornelia a daughter of Cinna drew the ire of the dictator Sulla, and he was forced into hiding during the Dictator’s reign of terror. He eventually found refuge in the legions, serving with distinction in the east and rising rapidly through the ranks. After Sulla’s death, Caesar returned to Rome and began a career in politics as a prosecuting advocate. A famous story from his early years shows his ruthless determination. In 75 BC, Caesar was captured by pirates, while sailing home from Rhodes from studying at the famous school of oratory; the same school Cicero had attended. While his ransom was being raised, he promised the pirates he would execute them once he’d secured his freedom. They assumed it was bluster, but he raised a private force, tracked the pirates down, and had them crucified all the same. Meanwhile, Caesar's political career was equally meteoric through cultivating friendships with both Pompey and his jealous rival Crassus: he was elected Military Tribune in 72 BC; a Senator in 68 BC; Chief Priest of Rome in 63 BC; and Praetor (one step below Consul) in 62 BC. He showed himself to be as deft in politics, as he would later prove with the sword - competent and fair, stern but understanding. He eventually emerged the de-facto leader of the populist faction in the Senate which favoured the cause of the Plebs, and opposed to the conservative interests of the Patricians. First Triumvirate Meanwhile, Pompey had returned from his conquests in the east, to find the Senate wary of him as a potential tyrant. In fact he was no popularist reformer, and always seemed content merely to bask in the glow of his own fame; in the coming years, Pompey would be the Senate’s most loyal defender. Yet for two years, the Senate obstructed him from fulfilling his modest obligation of plots of land for his veterans. Crassus also had been frustrated in a profitable tax-collecting venture in Asia Minor. Caesar, on good terms with both Pompey and Crassus, saw advantage in an alliance, and showed deft ability as a negotiator in reconciling the intense rivals; further sealed by the marriage of Pompey to Caesar's only daughter Julia. For Caesar, the First Triumvirate was the perfect springboard to greater power, which culminated in his election as Consul in 59 BC. Together the three men had the influence to virtually control the Senate, and, when that failed, the cynical use of selective rioting soon changed their minds. Land was found for Pompey's veterans, and Crassus' business problems were resolved. Caesar's own legislation was a swathe of much needed reforms, from redistributing lands to the poor, to punishing misconduct in provincial administration. Yet even the moderate Cicero was pushed into a confrontational position by Caesar's reckless methods. In retaliation, Caesar succeeded in having the great orator exiled for his actions during the Catilinarian Conspiracy. At the end of his term as Consul, Caesar could normally expect a provincial governorship for a period of one year. Instead he secured for himself two provinces across southern Gaul for five years, later extended to ten years. Caesar in Gaul A political career like Caesar's was enormously expensive, what with bribes to voters to throwing lavish games. With little family fortune behind him, he had spent much of his life to date swapping favours with Crassus to act as guarantor, and dodging angry debtors. Nevertheless, Caesar's new provinces provided him with rich opportunities; a recruiting ground for soldier loyal to him alone, and a springboard for military adventurism and plunder. At the time, Gaul beyond the Mediterranean basin was considered an uncivilised land populated by barbaric tribes, but it was a sophisticated society with towns, trade, and a complex network of alliances with Rome. The Gallic Wars (58-50 BC) would be one of the most famous campaigns in Roman history, not least because of Caesar’s brilliant flair for propaganda and self-promotion; his firsthand account of the campaign, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, ''is still required reading for Latin language courses today. First Caesar needed legal cover before he could begin his campaigns. The excuse duly arrived in 58 BC, with the mass migration west of the Helvetii tribe, prompted by other encroaching Germanic tribes. When Rome's Gallic allies appealed for Roman help, Caesar immediately led his legions into Gaul. The Helvetii themselves were dealt with relatively easily: at the Battle of the Arar (58 BC) a quarter of the tribe was wiped-out while crossing the river; and at the Battle of Bibracte (June 58 BC) destroyed as a threat. Although the remnants of the Helvetii were forced to return to their homeland, Caesar’s victory had wreaked the fragile balance of power in between Celtic Gaul and their aggressive Germanic neighbours. The first of this new wave of Germanic tribes flooding across the Rhine were the Suebi. Deep in enemy territory, far from supplies, Caesar was so hard pressed that he tried to negotiate a truce with the Suebi. They refused, but neither did they attack. When spies within the enemy camp learned that Germanic omens precluded a battle, Caesar seized his opportunity, breaking-off negotiations and attacking. At the Battle of Vosges (58 BC), despite being outnumbered, he broke the Suebi who fled-back across the Rhine. For the next few years, Caesar used a savvy strategy of divide-and-conquer to slowly assert Roman dominance over all of Gaul. To stem the flow of Germanic tribes into Gaul, he briefly bridged the Rhine twice in 55 and 53 BC, to cow the tribes with the knowledge that even their homeland was not safe from Rome. He also made two preliminary expeditions to the mysterious island of Britain, though little was achieved; it would be almost exactly a century before the Celtic chieftains of Britain were again disturbed by the Romans, during the reign of Emperor Claudius. By 52 BC, it had become clear to the native Gauls that the Romans were here to stay. The last major Gallic uprising found an inspired leader in Vercingetorix, a young chieftain of the Averni. Recognizing that the Romans had the upper hand on the battlefield, he fought a scorched earth guerrilla campaign to deprive them of supplies. Caesar even suffered the first defeat in all his years in Gaul, at the Battle of Gergovia (52 BC). Nevertheless, Caesar eventually besieged Vercingetorix at the fortress of Alesia. The two week Battle of Alesia (September 52 BC) was the last major engagement between Gauls and Romans, and is considered one of Caesar's greatest military achievements and a classic example of siege warfare. The fortress was encircled in fortification to starve out the defenders, while outer fortifications were built to stave of a large relieving army of Gauls. After a final attempted break-out failed, to save further lives, Vercingetorix rode out of the town and surrendered, in a dramatic gesture of Celtic chivalry; he was kept captive for six years before dying at Caesar's triumph in Rome. With this victory Gallic resistance melted away, and Gaul was a Roman province, which it would remain until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th-century AD. Caesar's Civil War Throughout his eight years absence from Rome, Caesar had been equally busy in shoring-up his political position at home, but nonetheless the First Triumvirate gradually unraveled. By 54 BC, Pompey was the only member of the First Triumvirate left in Rome. Crassus, still dreaming of a Triumph, had undertaken a campaign in the east against Parthian Persia. The Parthians were a nomadic people of the central Eurasian steppes, renowned for their horse-archers; among the first of a long tradition of such people who would impact European and Middle Eastern history, including the Huns, the Avars, the Turks, and most famously the Mongols. After establishing themselves in 247 BC, they gradually conquered the Seleucid Persian Empire, until Pompey finally snuffed-out the Seleucid rump-state in Syria in 63 BC. Crassus sought military glory to match his two rivals in the Triumvirate, but was killed along with half his army at the Battle of Carrhae (May 53 BC) against a numerically-inferior but devastating cavalry-and-arrow attack. This was the beginning of a long rivalry between Rome and Persia, that would dramatically conclude some 600 years later with the mutually disastrous Roman-Persian War (572-591 AD). Meanwhile in 54 BC, the death of Julia, the daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompey, had removed an important bond between the two remaining Triumvirates. Caesar desperately tried to salvage the partnership by offering Pompey a second marriage alliance, but instead Pompey, envious of Caesar's successes in Gaul, married the daughter of a staunch conservative and political opponent of Caesar. The breach in the First Triumvirate finally came with the end of Caesar's governorship in 50 BC. Now fearing Caesar as a possible tyrant, the Senate led by Pompey demanded that Caesar must disband his army and return to Rome as a private citizen. However Caesar insisted he should be allowed to stand for Consul in absentia, to protect himself from legal prosecution. As the showdown escalated, Caesar sent his most trusted lieutenant Mark Anthony to Rome as Tribute of the Plebs to protect his interests. However, the Senate refused to back down, and on the day of the vote to declared Caesar an enemy of the state, Mark Anthony was manhandled out of the Senate, before he could exercise his veto; Caesar would use this clear violation of the office of Tribune to stir up his troops. With few options left open to him, on 10 January 49 BC, Caesar and just one legion marched across the Rubicon River out of his province and into the home peninsula; consciously and irrevocably sparking '''Caesar's Civil War' (49–45 BC). Famously, upon crossing the Rubicon, Caesar quoted the Athenian playwright Menander, "the die is cast"; they were all in the hands of fate now, whatever he fickle verdict turned out to be. The unexpected invasion, with Caesar moving rapidly, caused Pompey and the Senate to panic. They withdrew via Brundisium to Roman Greece, where Pompey had made his name and his strength lay. Unlike Marius and Sulla, who on marching on Rome had used their power to murder their enemies, Caesar showed remarkable restraint. During his brief stay in Rome, he focused on stabilising the state and dealing with the economic meltdown caused by the outbreak of civil war. Then, leaving Mark Anthony in charge in Rome, Caesar effecting an astonishingly fast 27-day march to Hispania in order to deal with Pompey’s supporters there. Pacifing Hispania required little actual fighting. After seeing how rich Caesar’s legions had become under the great general, the Pompeian army immediately began deserting, and the leaders had little option but to surrender. Caesar again showed astonishing leniency considering the times, merely disbanding the remnants of the legions. This policy would serve him well as the civil war reached its conclusion, for while his own men were fighting for their lives, his enemies could hope for Caesar’s mercy. Caesar returned via Italy to renew his pursuit of Pompey. Pompey had spent the year gathering his army in Greece, and it was certain that come the spring he would cross the Adriatic. Taking the fight to his enemy, Caesar ordered an almost unprecedented winter crossing to Greece, not once but twice because he lacked the ships to ferry his entire army. However, Pompey had made his name clearing the Mediterranean of pirates, and had the better navy; although the first crossing was successful, the second was stopped by Pompey’s naval blockade. This left Caesar in a very precarious position near the port of Dyrrhachium, facing Pompey's much larger and better supplied army. Yet Pompey opted to besiege Caesar into submission, even when in the spring Mark Anthony lit a fire under the second half of Caesar's army, and successfully ran the blockade to link-up. The stalemate was broken in May 48 BC, when Pompey launched a full-on assault, and breach Caesar’s siege-works. However, Caesar and his army managed to slip away, and although the retreat soon descended into a panicked rout, Pompey failed to press his advantage, fearing Caesar’s reputation for clever feints. The civil war met its conclusive end at the Battle of Pharsalus (June 48 BC), where Caesar was outnumbered almost two to one. Although Pompey held all the advantages, Caesar's disciplined veteran legions held the centre, while the battle was decided on the right flank. There Pompey’s supposedly superior cavalry were driven-off by Caesar's own cavalry and a hidden legion of his best men. The cavalry on the flank then swept around behind Pompey line’s, and rolled his entire army up like a carpet. Pompey himself fled the battlefield, and made for Egypt a broken man running for his life. In Egypt, Pompey was assassinated by court ministers of Ptolemy XIII (47 BC), seeking to curry favour with Caesar. In this, the conspiring ministers could not have been more wrong. Having been denied of his coup-de-grace of pardoning Pompey, a furious Caesar decided to interveve in the ongoing civil war in Egypt between Ptolemy XIII and his sister Cleopatra VII (30 BC). Although Caesar was besieged in Alexandria for several months, he was eventually reinforced, and helped the young queen suppress the forces of her younger brother. Cleopatra was installed as ruler in Egypt, the last pharaoh of still nominally independent Ptolemaic Egypt. The two famously became lovers, with Caesar fathering his only natural son with her. The civil war would carry on for another two years against pockets of resistance, but the end result was rarely in doubt; the Senatorial forces in north Africa under Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger were defeated in April 46 BC; and forces in Hispania under Pompey's sons in March 45 BC. Ides of March Caesar returns the long way to Rome, up round the coast to Asia Minor, where he rapidly defeated a rebellious king. In Rome, Caesar adopted the old Republican position of Dictator, eventually extended for life. He used his absolute power as a vehicle to right the ship of state through an ambitious program of reforms: he performed the first proper census in years to eliminate corruption from the state-subsidised grain supply; subsidised the urban poor to move out to the provinces; embarked on a bold and far reaching series of public-works projects across Italy; offered citizenship to foreign professionals who moved to Rome to boost the economy; and also expanded the ranks of the depleted Senate with important men from across the provinces regardless of national origins. However, his most enduring legacy was the introduction of the Julian calendar, which remains in effect almost untouched right down to the present day. The seeds of disenchantment with Caesar’s autocratic rule grew gradually. During his Triumph, Caesar paraded giant depictions of his defeated enemies through the streets of Rome, but the masses reacted badly to the depiction of Cato the Younger; no one actually liked the old curmudgeon, but should they really be revelling in the death of an honourable Roman. Caesar then got embroiled in a pointless public spat with Cicero over a eulogy for Cato, which only made him seem petulantly unhinged. Yet the most damning allegation was that Caesar intended to have himself crowned king, a rumour that the man himself conspicuously failed to distance himself from. The conspirators that plotted to kill Caesar eventually grew to about 60 men; some like Gaius Cassius were long-time enemies; some like Gaius Trebonius were disaffected former allies who felt they had been sidelined; and others like Marcus Brutus were Republican idealists. When Caesar began preparing for another war against Parthian Persia to avenge Crassus, his enemies realised that their time was running out. On 15 March 44 BC, the Ides of March, Caesar was in the Senate when a conspirator presented him with petition. As others crowded around seemingly to offer support, he was assassinated, stabbed 23 times and dying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the Senate House. The legend surrounding the assassination has Caesar in anguish seeing Brutus among the attackers and saying "You too, child?" or in Shakespears poetic turn "Et tu, Brute?"; dramatic and memorable, but a complete fiction. Yet far from restoring the Roman Republic as the conspirators had hope, they had instead unleashed a chain of events that would lead within twenty years to its end, and the establishment of the Roman Empire. Second Triumvirate In the aftermath of Caesar’s death, the assassins and supposed restorers of the Roman Republic made three crucial mistakes. First, they had no plan for who should fill the power vacuum once the Dictator was gone. Second, they focused all their attention on Caesar, and paid no attention to his close supporters, such as his loyal lieutenant Mark Anthony. And third, they miscalculated the reaction of the masses, for Caesar had been a powerful advocaat of the interests of the common people. As Consul for that year, Mark Anthony had every legitimate reason to step into the power vacuum left by Caesar's death. He calmed the situation by making a truce with the Senate, in return for the ratificayion all of Caesar's actions. Even the assassins of Caesar were granted an amnesty, but he had no intention of allowing them to remain in Rome. Stoked-up by Mark Anthony’s stirring funeral oration for Caesar, the people rioted, and Brutus, Crassus, and the others had to flee Rome for their lives. Nonetheless, when Caesar's will was opened, Mark Anthony discovered that he was faced with a dangerous new rival for power. In it, Caesar posthumously adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavian and named him his principal heir; the future Emperor Augustus. There did not seem to be anything remarkable about this practically unknown young man. Octavian was fragile and prone to sickness, but also an able student. Most critically, he seemed to attract the right kind of friends. Octavius would conquer the Roman empire together with his childhood friends Marcus Agrippa and Gaius Maecenas; Agrippa would win the battles for him, while Maecenas handled some of the politics and much of the propaganda. Displaying some of the steel in his heart, Octavian acted decisively, quickly building-up a personal army from Caesar's loyal veterans, through stoking resentment at Mark Anthony's conciliation with the Senate. Meanwhile, at the end of his Consulship, Mark Anthony forced through his appointment as governor of Cisalpine Gaul, in part to rebuild his position as leader of the Caesarian faction. His appointment meant cutting-short the governorship of Decimus Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins, who was unlikely to give-up without a fight. Indeed Mark Anthony marched north in December 44 BC and besieged Decimus at Mutina. As soon as he left Rome, the Senate turned on Mark Anthony under the vigorous leadership of Cicero, who delivered a series of scathing orations, collectively known as the Philippicae. Seeing the younger heir as the lesser of the two evils, the two Consuls joined forces with Octavian to spark the brief Post-Caesarian Civil War (44–43 BC). Their combined forces lifted the siege of Mutina and twice defeated Mark Antony, who managed to withdraw into southern Gaul. However, both Consuls were killed in the fighting, throwing the situation into confusion. With Octavian left in sole command of the armies, he refuse the Senate's order to continue in pursuit of Mark Anthony; he had plans of his own. Instead, at a meeting near Bologna in October 43 BC, Octavian, Mark Antony, and virtually silent partner Marcus Lepidus agreed to unite against their common enemies and seize power in a new alliance; the Second Triumvirate (43-33 BC). Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus now ruled the Roman empire as a three-headed dictator, with the primary objective to avenge Caesar's death. Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius, the leaders of the conspirators, were currently amassing a large army in Greece; the Liberators' Civil War (44–42 BC). The reign of the Triumvirate began by setting in motion a brutal proscription In order to pay for this campaign; a practice that Julius Caesar had steadfastly refused to engage in, not seen since the days of Sulla. Some 2,500 Senators and opponents were stripped of their wealth, their property and their lives; Cicero, the eloquent defender of the Republican ideal, was among its victims. Leaving Lepidus in control of Rime, Octavian and Mark Antony ferried some 100,000 soldiers across the Adriatic. Brutus and Cassius had setup strong defensive positions near the town of Philippi in Thrace; two fortified camps upon hills with a wall connecting the two. The Battle of Philippi (October 42 BC) was undoubtedly Mark Anthony’s victory and the finest hour of his career; Octavian was present but was sick throughout, fueling the rumours that persistentlys dogged him that he was a coward. Mark Antony quickly assessed the situation; Thrace could not support the army for long, and a frontal assault would be suicidal, but the marshes to the south showed promise. He had his engineers built a causeway through the muck, and successfully stormed Cassius' camp; in the aftermath Cassius committed suicide. However, while this was going on, Brutus had seized Antony's own camp having noticed that it was virtually unprotected; leaving the battle at a peculiar draw, Antony in control of Cassius' camp, and Brutus in control of Antony's. However, with Cassius the far more respected general gone, discipline crumbed in Brutus' army. On the final day of the battle, as soon as the Liberator army was pushed back, they broke and fled the field; afterwards Brutus in turn took his own life. Division of Territory In 42 BC, two years after the assassination of Julius Caesar was supposed to herald the return of the Republic, the Romans were as far removed from democracy as they had been under the kings of Rome. The empire was divided, with Octavian’s spheres of influence in Italy and the west, and Mark Anthony's in the east. Lepidus, a weak man accidentally thrust into prominence, quickly found himself with nothing, in what had always been a struggle between the pair. In the west, Octavian had by far the tougher of the tasks, not least the bureaucratic nightmare of demobilising tens-of-thousands of veterans and finding them land on an already overcrowded peninsula. He also had to contend with Sextus Pompey, a son of the great general, in open rebellion since 44 BC, having seized controlled of Sicily. With a fleet that far outgunned anything Octavian could muster, Sextus was intent on undermining Octavian's position in Italy by blockading the peninsula. When a political alliance cemented by Octavian marrying Sextus' relative proved temporary and then an invasion in 38 BC was disastrous, Octavian handed the task entirely over to his right hand man Marcus Agrippa. Agrippa spent a whole year building a new fleet on Lake Avernus, and then linked it to the sea with a canal. In 36 BC, Octavian and Agrippa set sail for Sicily, where the naval fleet of Sextus was almost entirely destroyed at the Battle of Naulochus (September 36 BC). After seven years, Sicily was finally wrested back under control. At the same time in the east, Mark Anthony had by far the more glamorous position. He first settled in Anatolia, where he indulged in a lavish lifestyle while reorganising the unsatisfactory political arrangements that had governed the region since the day of Pompey Magnus. Weak-willed client-monarchies were deposed, and replaced with capable administrators he could trust. Meanwhile, he began raising money for the long dreamed of conquest of Parthian Persia, and his gaze inevitably turned south to the rich lands of Egypt. An alliance between Mark Anthony and Cleopatra came naturally, with the young queen in need of a new Roman patron to maintain her on her throne; the two famously became lovers, despite Anthony already being married to Octavian’s sister. In 36 BC, Mark Anthony finally ready to march his army of over 100,000 men into the Parthian Empire. As with Crassus almost 20 years before, the invasion was a debacle. Anthony desired a pitched battle but the Parthians would not engage, drawing the army deep into Parthian territory. His slow moving and under-guarded baggage train was then attacked, destroying all the siege-works, and ruining any hope of capturing a major city to establish winter quarters. Anthony was forced into an ignoble retreat back to the Mediterranean, a retreat reminiscent of nothing more than Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1712. On a savage march through the harsh mountain snows while constantly being harassed by the Parthians, Mark Anthony lost a quarter of his army and most of his respect as a general. Octavian and Anthony’s Civil War Fractures in the Second Triumvirate came early and often, and it always seemed destined to fall apart. In 41 BC, Mark Anthony’s brother and first wife conspired to ferment rebellion against Octavian in Italy. It proved a minor if protracted affair, and just how much Anthony knew about it is unclear. In 40 BC during Sextus Pompey’s rebellion in Sicily, both Octavian and Anthony made overtures to ally with him against the other. The conflict culminated in Mark Anthony briefly besieging Octavian at Brundisium, but when both legion-camps refused to fight, the pair were forced to settle their differences. In 37 BC, an agreement was reached for Mark Antony to exchange 120 ships for 20,000 soldiers from Octavian, and while Anthony did send the ships, the legions never arrived. By 35 BC, it was clear that both sides were secretly preparing for civil war. Octavian decided to conquer Illyricum (modern Albania), as an excuse to maintain his legions in the field. Meanwhile, Mark Anthony was building a massive navy supposedly for another invasion of Parthian Persia, although why he would need 400 ships to invade the Iranian plateau remains unclear. As the showdown escalated, Octavian launched an inflammatory propaganda campaign against Mark Anthony for the hearts and minds of Rome: with his lavish lifestyle Anthony was supposedly going native in the east; Anthony was married while openly the lover of Cleopatra; and Anthony was turning the east into a kingdom by installing his own illegitimate children as governors in Armenia, Libya and Syria. The final breach and pretext for another civil war finally came in late 32 BC, when Octavian illegally obtained Mark Anthony’s will. In it, he stated his desire to be buried in Alexandria rather than in Rome, which prompted the Senate officially declared war on Anthony and Cleopatra's regime in Egypt; Antony's Civil War (32-30 BC). In early 31 BC, Mark Antony manoeuvred his army and navy to western Greece, establishing a base in the Ambracian Gulf with the tiny port-town of Actium at the head. While Octavian’s legions crossed the Adriatic and besieged him on-land, Agrippa led a daring raid on Methone, Anthony’s key supply hub to the south. This left Antony in a hopeless position, with little choice but to retreat back to Egypt. At the end of the summer, Mark Antony decided to break out, but when he sailed out past Actium, Agrippa’s fleet was waiting; the Battle of Actium (September 31 BC). Antony was an experienced soldier but did not understand naval combat, while Agrippa had spent years fighting naval battles around Sicily. Seeing that Antony was being outmatched by Agrippa, Cleopatra seized the opportunity of a gap in Agrippa's blockade, fleeing into open sea without firing a shot. She was soon closely followed by Antony's own command ships, and the remaining commanders promptly surrendered without a fight. When Octavian pursued the pair to Egypt, Mark Anthony wanted to meet him in battle, but even his attempt at a gloriously death was thwarted; he was forced to watch as his navy and legions deserted. On 1 August 30 BC, his cause lost, Mark Antony fell on his sword in honourable Roman tradition. Cleopatra did not immediately follow Antony in suicide. Instead, she tried to negotiate with Octavian for weeks, until it became clear that he planned to formally annex Egypt and parade her through Rome in his Triumph. According to a familiar legend, she had an attendant smuggle a asp into her bedchamber concealed in a bowl of figs. Cleopatra then poked at the snake, until it sand its poisonous fangs into her. Her son with Julius Caesar, Caesarion, was butchered without compunction, with Octavian supposedly remarking "two Caesars are one too many". While in Alexandria, Octavian visited the cities most famous relic, the tomb of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian, who had conquered his way to India before his 30th birthday, had long been the benchmark by which all politicians and generals judge themselves. Alexander was typically a humbler of great men, but 33-year old Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian, the sole master of the Roman Empire, must have imagined that he stacked up pretty well. Category:Historical Periods